Cameraman reveals what OceanGate CEO said to him if they got lost in Titan sub
A camerman who ventured out on a test dive in the Titan sub revealed the ‘very strange’ comment made by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
Brian Weed worked for the Discovery Channel’s ‘Expedition Unknown’ TV show in May 2021 when he boarded the Titan sub.
Insider reports the conversation Mr Weed had with Mr Rush. He said: ‘Well, there’s four or five days of oxygen on board,’ and I said, ‘What if they don’t find you?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re dead anyway.’
Mr Weed continued: ‘It felt like a very strange thing to think, and it seemed to almost be a nihilistic attitude toward life or death out in the middle of the ocean.’
The camerman said Mr Rush’s attitude towards safety felt like it was ‘cavalier’, which made him feel ‘uneasy’ from the start.
The test dive had to be aborted because it was plagued with mechanical and communications issues, according to Mr Weed.
‘That whole dive made me very uncomfortable with the idea of going down to Titanic depths in that submersible,’ Mr Weed recalled, adding it didn’t feel safe.
Because of his concerns, Mr Weed pulled out of the documentary project and the production was later cancelled.
The concerns come after an unnamed former finance director of OceanGate said she quit her job after Mr Rush asked her to take over the controls of the Titan submersible.
She said she was unable to trust Mr Rush, after the former chief pilot David Lochridge was fired for raining safety concerns in 2018.
OceanGate has now ‘suspended all exploration and commercial operations’.
The submersible imploded last month while on a voyage to the undersea wreckage of the Titanic off the coast of Canada.
All five people on board were killed, including Mr Rush.
The other people on board who were killed included UK citizens Hamish Harding and dad and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood as well as French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
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